Overview
From its founding in 1912, the short-lived Keystone Film Company--home of the frantic, bumbling Kops and Mack Sennett's Bathing Beauties--made an indelible mark on American popular culture with its high-energy comic shorts. Even as Keystone brought "lowbrow" comic traditions to the screen, the studio played a key role in reformulating those traditions for a new, cross-class audience. In The Fun Factory, Rob King explores the dimensions of that process, arguing for a new understanding of working-class cultural practices within early cinematic mass culture. He shows how Keystone fashioned a style of film comedy from the roughhouse humor of cheap theater, pioneering modes of representation that satirized film industry attempts at uplift. Interdisciplinary in its approach, The Fun Factory offers a unique studio history that views the changing politics of early film culture through the sociology of laughter.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780520255388
- ISBN-10: 0520255380
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publish Date: December 2008
- Dimensions: 9.02 x 6 x 0.95 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
- Page Count: 376
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